"Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain 294
David Gerard writes "Lord Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen and announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain. The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?"
Govt does this all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
The UK parliament is in enough trouble through them dishonestly claiming too much expenses -- time for a real reform. Men of honour don't seem to exist in politics (in large enough numbers), so we need real transparency and accountability.
Guy Fawkes night is soon -- maybe a real reenactment is about due!
Widespread Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, the recent trend in government is towards snooping and perv-ish behavior: China with its "great" firewall, USA with its unwarranted spying and packet sniffing, and now the UK with its new "three-strikes" policies. I pay my ISP a significant sum of money to deliver me 1s and 0s as fast as they can, and there are very, very few exceptions in which they have a need to know what those 1s and 0s add up to.
I call upon the open source community to lead the way -- while I would love to see the big leagues (Microsoft, Apple, etc) apply their tonnage behind such a problem, pigs are more likely to fly first. How hard would it be for a browser to automatically attempt to negotiate a secure connection for every visited web page and only use normal, unencrypted access when a secure connection fails or cannot be completed in a secure amount of time? People running web servers would not have to make major modifications, only implement a new protocol.
Hey Britons (Score:4, Interesting)
Level of Responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)
If one person in a family is accused of pirating, the whole household gets cut off?
If one person in a company is accused of pirating while at work, the whole company gets cut off?
If one person in a ministry is accused of pirating while at work, the whole ministry gets cut off?
Who is _allowed_ to accuse?
Dear Lily Allen, (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9-esIM2CY [youtube.com]
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree - I happen to work for a massive piece of this 'M-I Complex', and we're dying here. All the major aerospace and defense companies are going through a seriously hard time and shedding people or outsourcing like mad.
If it were as simple as this, I wouldn't be looking for work :)
Re:Can't Wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:2, Interesting)
Absolutely agree that the political establishment in the UK is not particularly democratic (though it tends to be reactionary I suggest that's not quite the same thing). I would advocate this is why we could benefit from proportional representation in the UK as it would lend power to pressure groups (though I am not blind to the drawbacks).
If our government were more democratic we would probably have a three strikes rule for traditional crimes (robbery, assault, sexual offences) but not for unlicensed content redistribution. As it is, you can have a dozen offences for robbery and minor assault and still not get a custodial sentence (at least not one more than a few weeks at most).[1]
It's true that people in the UK worry way too much about crime, but it's also true that the state is seen to be ineffective when it comes to punishment (commonly regarded as dealing it out ham-fistedly and at the wrong targets). Personally I would argue it works most of the time, but when it fails it does so spectacularly.
[1] Going off topic, but as an explanation, this is because our prisons are overcrowded (not as much as the US, but more than is typical in Europe) and this government (as well as in part the previous administration) have failed to provide adequate facilities.
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:3, Interesting)
There's nothing special about the so-called military-industrial complex in this respect, and you don't have to assume that politicians or businesses are either inherently evil or particularly incompetent. It's more like a defect of the system and is explained by the Public choice theory [wikipedia.org] of government. Lobbying happens in all sorts of policy areas and unfortunately it tends to be a case of those who shout loudest, get what they want. I think this also explains a lot about why three-strikes is apparently happening in the UK against almost every expert opinion and the wishes of the majority.
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
The UK! Nice.
If it had started on a computer wise under-developped country. All it's population would have to wait until the law reached the UK, France, USA, etc. to have any chance of a working full network encryption.
Anyway, as I've often stated in slashdot, the arms race will keep going, and the corporation lobbied laws will fail to keep up with the technologists.
In little more than a decade the americans will start a war on piracy that will work about as well as the current unwinnable wars. i.e.: A secure, illegal, connection will cost several times more than it's lawful price and a huge percentage of the population will pay them and access the contents anyway.
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think they care at all what the people think? If anything proves that any form of democracy is not at work here, this does. Business interests are guiding, directing and even controlling government all over the world. The world may be pissed off at the U.S. government, but one only has to look to the "Military Industrial Complex" for why things are the way they are.
Oh the leading party cares very much what people think - though usually more if "what people think" is dramatically at odds with "what they want to do". In such cases, they'll spend inordinate amounts of money (oh, and where does that money come from...?) to tell people what to think. See also: ID cards.
Furthermore, individual MPs are frequently so loyal to their party that no matter how braindead the idea, most will still fall into line and vote for it. My own MP is part of the incumbent party and I don't think she has ever said so much as a single word against any of the government's policies. There's no earthly way she's going to rock the boat over an issue like this.
Lily Allen - hypocrite? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pot? Kettle is on the phone...
Re:Why would P2P switch to encryption? (Score:3, Interesting)
Encryption itself won't help much here, but things like tor and freenet would. If someone were to apply the ideas behind tor to something like BitTorrent, it'd be impossible to tell whether any given node in a torrent were actually using the material it were distributing or simply sitting there passing it on.
Some speculations on the motives (Score:3, Interesting)
These people in government have advisors, technical experts and all sorts of qualified people to tell them how worthless this will be.
It boggles the imagination to not even contemplate the number of false positives this will generate, besides encryption, it has been pointed out
many times that all this may do is drive more people to hack their neighbors' wireless networks, using Kismet or other trivial password sniffers.
If up to 10% of all PCs worldwide can be hacked into botnets, it doesn't take a genius to see doing similar things from other people's machines
and let them take the fall for it....
The only explanation I can come up with is that either:
widely-acknowledged cinematic references in truly depressing thoughts, to first be tested on the public for 'authenticity' on how to
best persecute innocent people with maximum effect?
sense, but also cunningly facilitates implementing surveillance and further counter-measures against 'criminalization'. (see above)
Regardless of the answer to these silly questions, one can only wonder what the endgame will be. Enforcement or not, the major content holders
cannot keep going the way they have been, and with ever-dwindling revenue, (especially in the music divisions) will eventually have their assets
ultimately disposed of at the auction block for pennies on the dollar to people like Google, who will love nothing better than to practically give
it away for free, in trying to lure customers to purchase other things, rather than to keep suing them for not buying physical goods in formats
that were once popular during the previous century, and still demanding to charge the same price for it without the old expenses.
And what will this grand adventure have accomplished? There is a name for that special moment in the hunt, when the game is barely walking,
bleeding profusely, surrounded by a pack of growling dogs, but still trying to gore one of them on their way out....In French "La Curée"
That's pretty much what it feels like.... Really!
Scorched Earth Policy..... This too will come to pass.
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:4, Interesting)
The M-I C actually was dramatically downsized during the Clinton/Republican Congress years, and according to the Bush's proposed budgets from 2001-to-2010 would have been downsized even further (with the surplus directed towards the SSA trust fund).
Then 9/11 happened, and like fools that respond to trolls on the internet, we responded to Bin Laden's baiting. Now things are out of control again. I had enough sense to say, "Ignore the Arab. Two skyscrapers are not worth starting a war over," but nobody listened. We should have continued along the original course.
Re:Three strikes in Politics.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yay for unelected politicians who keep coming back despite being forced to resign in shame.
I think his unelected status is a bit of a red herring, to be honest. The unelected Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy is pretty much exactly as dodgy as the duly elected Rt Hon Peter Mandelson MP was. Plus there are plenty of other very dodgy elected politicians (as the recent expenses furore demonstrated), and lots of entirely sensible and honest unelected peers (especially the non-party-affiliated cross-benchers) who do very good work, are acknowledged experts in their fields, and who are definitely worth having involved in the legislature. But yes, there does seem to have been a bit of a tradition of "two strikes and you get a peerage" in British politics over the last few decades: the novelist and convicted liar Jeffrey Archer is a prime example, and it can only be a matter of time before David Blunkett gets kicked upstairs too.
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:4, Interesting)
And then the People will sue.
And the case will rise to the level of the EU Court, which will declare these laws unconstitu..... uh, in violation of the Lisbon Treaty. Namely the EU Charter of Rights: "Article 48-1. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law." i.e. 3 strikes is invalid because it assumes guilt without trial.
This law can also be argued to violate Article 11 - "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers." And Article 14 - "Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and continuing training." How can little Johnny do his homework if his internet has been cut, and he can't access wikipedia?
What about leaked government data (Score:4, Interesting)
The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said. The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said. It would mean that, for example, someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully.
So now we just need to find three instances that an MP shared any copyright material with a friend or colleague. Presumably accidentaly leaking millions of instances of personal details held in government databases doesnt count?
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm... yeah, actually I think they are - if Big Content can't snoop on your communications, neither can Big Brother (whether you think this is good or bad is another matter entirely).
Actually, what they're talking about isn't widespread encryption (that's already in place, e.g. SSL), but widespread anonymity. P2P over SSL is no more secure from a record label sniffer than P2P over cleartext - they just attack the P2P network (that's what they do today - they're not actually doing network monitoring). What the British are afraid of is widespread anonymity (like Freenet, for example) - and with that, neither law enforcement nor Geffen records can see what you're downloading or uploading.
That said, they have nothing to worry about. Widespread anonymity will never become the norm. Any truly censorship-resistant scheme, whatever it may be, will be resistant against ALL censorship, not just selective censorship. So if you believe that .mp3's and scientology documents should not be censored, but porn should, you're out of luck if you want a technical solution. And the (sad, IMHO) fact is that most people support censorship of at least some things and will never buy into a system that makes this impossible.
this will just result in (Score:3, Interesting)
encryption being declared illegal in GB, or worse, having to register your encryption key with the government or risk being classified as a terrorist. MI5/6 and the other law enforcement agencies are doing the 'not our idea' dance right now, but they know in the long run the Nanny-State that is the GB will not allow somthing like a persons privacy to stand in the way of spreading fear and mis-information under the guise of protecting the nation.
If they criminalize encryption, only criminals will have it...
Re:Good (Score:1, Interesting)
Your Doctor example can't apply here because the Doctor is charging you for his time, so if you left without paying then you would be stealing his time. Sure musicians put time into recording, but once recorded they collect indefinitely. Live shows are where it's at, when a person goes to a show they're paying to see the artist preform, they're paying for the artist time. People who break into shows are stealing.
Now that's a contradiction to your previous statement.
No it's not. If the market determined something should be free then that is the price the market has determined.
/. are very anti windows, MS doesn't make a half bad product, it's certainly better then I could do on my own. Ubuntu, which I personally like, is picking up steam, but I doubt it will ever be on all the computers in my office.
I work in much the same way as many of these "artist". I develop for a company, not individual clients. The company then uses my product to gain income. Not directly form my product, but from the supplemental activity like data collection, analysis and research. Think of it like giving away CD's to build a base of fans, but raking in the money for a concert and other merchandise. You ever gone to a concert and seen what they charge for a bottle of water, snacks, T-shirts and other nick-knacks.
If the market determined my skills aren't worth anything, then I'd be out of a job or I would create demand or I would develop new skills. When artists stop making music because there is no benefit to them and there is a shortage of entertainment, people will start to pay for it
I have friends in smaller bands. I went to university with one of the guys in the band Squid [tastysquid.com] he quit university because he made more money in the band then he figured he'd ever make as a Computer Scientist. Good thing too, he's a much better drummer then a programmer *I kid*. Sure he's not living in a million dollar house, but he is doing very well for himself. The band makes almost nothing off of CD sales, but they can make a few thousand each off of a show. Squid toured with Drum [drumshow.ca] for a while and made a killing off of it.
As for your "Can't compete with free" statement. I do agree with you that it's difficult to compete with free, but it's not impossible. Look at Windows vs. Linux., MS Office vs. Open office. Despite the fact that many people on
Yes the "three strikes" law will penalize people who are sharing music and movies, innocent or not, but what's really happening is the government is taking away a tool people are using to change an over priced over saturated market. I'm sure you can agree with me on the fact that entertainment, while not directly necessary to life, is essential, we need it like a drug. without file sharing the options are pay what company's set the price at or go without. File sharing provides a third options where a person can say "I want your product, but I'm not paying xxx dollars for it". There was a time a long time ago where music and other forms of entertainment were free. The issue these days is the entertainment industry is coming out of a "golden age" where they produced something people needed AND they decided how much to charge for it, because if they all charged the same price people only had the option to buy or not buy. Because people need entertainment that's not much of an option. Then along comes file sharing and the "golden age" ends. It's an adjustment for the industry that they are doing everything in their power to stop, while still making a fortune I might add, but you can't stop an avalanche. All their doing is digging a deeper